I like my cabinet door style builds. No doors to spring on me, no counterbalance, extra grate space on the top allowing for a couple more chunks of smoked goodness. It does require chunking away some steel and replacing it tho. Since tanks are all I am usually able to score for a build, I think I have turned the lost steel into a winning situation however, I roll my ports to that location and with that as my scrapout, no more bungs to plug. I never liked that part anyway. ;) Onto the doors...I have been building wrap around doors, scored, broke, welded and ground smooth. While providing a decent seal, due to only being able to weld them out on one side, they do tend to pull a bit requiring some tweaks in the press followed up with some strongbacks. Further sealing with that design has been limited. This build I have inverted the front framework to allow for some inset doors. Using 1" sq tube with a 1/4" plate backing will allow for some high temp fiberglass strips to be riveted onto the door surface. That's the plan at least. I haven't built one with this design before so some learning curves are bound to show up. This is what I have so far... a 54' long tank with the bell ends removed. This will give me 25" wide racks each when framed out
The side caps cut and stitch welded in place. I used a one piece on the FB side to include the FB back and will build the FB on the cooker. The scrap area required only the 2 horizontal cuts for top and bottom and lifted out nicely.

awesome wreckless! please do not be offended if I use that in some of my designs LOL. I have always wanted to do something like that with a pipe build. Kam's doors are another great design as well.
I will call them "Wreckless Doors"

Blazer...Thank You!
Rick...Thank you!
smokeone...Thank You!
Smoker Tom...Thank You!
maccas66...Thank You!
I struggled with the idea of getting as much done inside the cooker prior to the caps being mounted on previous builds. I decided it wasn't worth it. While it does at times seem like building a ship in a bottle, I will do just about anything neccessary to keep that nasty unspeakable four letter word out of my world. WARP The end caps go on first, for now.

Frank...Thank you! No offense, flattered, borrow away. The design was originally borrowed from a fine occasional builder from Kansas anyway. His was over the top. I borrowed enough so that mere mortals such as myself can build it. "Wreckless Doors"... i love it,too frikkin cool. k.a.m.'s doors??...boy oh boy, that's a whole 'nother story ;)

With my wrap around door design, the angle frame projecting outward, there just wasn't enough to call true to build the frame anyway but onto the cooker. That made for a bit of squaring up to build. With the angle inverted, i was able to build a subframe and mount it all in one piece which made the square rather simple.
The frame and roof all tied together
The doors built. 1" x 1/8"thk sq tube with a 1/4" plate front. I stitched these up on the front side, flipped them and stitched the inside, flipped again for the front weld out. Ground smooth for a one piece appearance. Time consuming for all the flipping and cool down times but they came out FLAT. That's all I could ask for.

No, the project did not go FUBAR on me, I got sidetracked with a few rehabs ( cookers folks, cookers...) and a Santa Maria build. I finally got back to it tho, some of the in between steps missed the photo op. The high temp, flat rope, inset doors were main reason for the post tho so i will have a few pics and details once I see how it stands up to the blaster. I put the seals on prior to the blaster so that i would get the "as it will be used" proper mounting for the doors. Original design was a flat top firebox but I was persuaded to cut in a top load. Here is where the cooker is currently...

dcman...Thanks bud, the shop is a humble one but a fun place to be, it has enough out there that i can MacGuyver quite a lot with some imagination
Frank_Cox...Thank You! This is about the 6'th one, 8'th(?) I have made with the front opening but for sure, no 2 were alike. Like most back 40 builders, i have to mess with / improve on something on each build.
Rick ...Thanks for the kudo and the stop by. Yeah, a test burn.
maccas66...Thank You! The pipe is my buds. it is supposed to be a smoker someday. I have dreamed up thoughts where that would be the correct size for a smokestack and luckily...I have come to my senses before it became a reality

Finished! I have built more than a few mobile backyarders and the 10" pnuematics have served me well when finding and delivering them to a new home. This one was going to be garage kept. No trips through a backyard so the rolling stock would be my first shot at using casters. I chose some 375# per wheel weight rated casters, the orange ones pictured earlier. The pit tops out at around 1000#. Should have been plenty on the first thought. Wrong thought. They were smooth as silk rolling around on the slab but further excursions showed that while they were ok for downward forces, they were not able to hold up to lateral forces and tried to bowleg themselves. %@(&@! Had to do some nasty demo work. i replaced them with much heavier 600# casters. Nice rolling stock.
The door seals applied in the fab stage made it through the blaster and paint fine. I used 1" wide 1/8" high temp seals, glued and riveted in place.
To be continued...

Until recently I would agree with you DC but I did a cook on Ridgeline Hardwood briquettes last weekend and it came out great!
Only 18 cents a pound too. So there are some other good brands out there - scary thing is risking the meat on them to find out.
They are the house brand of briquettes through the Affiliated Foods group of groceries for what it's worth ...

And on the eighth day God created barbecue …. because he DOES love us and he wants us to be happy.
Current smokers: Egor (trailered RF) and Easybake (tabletop pellet drive)

Thank you Frank!
smokeone...Thank you! I currently have not missed lifting a cooker door.
And finally... i did a test fire, to check the door seal and to cure the Rusto Satin Black. The seals worked well. The smoke curling out from the doors and / or any other leak common before the stack gets up to draw was virtually non existent. The smoke from the cold cooker pretty much had nowhere to go but out the open RF stack while coming up to temp. Cool deal. A six of new owner supplied Dos Equis and a bit of BS thrown in and it was off to a good home.